FORGET YOUR RIDE—PIMP YOUR WEB SERVICE

When it comes to the Web, dedicated search engines that only, well, search are out. These days, the focus is one-stop shopping-with a Web service.

The recipe is simple: Start by combining all kinds of search capability-general Web, desktop, image, and whatever else-in one spot. Stir in a bunch of free services like news, weather, and mapping.

Garnish with a generous supply of customization options-let users design their own homepages, drop the components they don’t want and add the ones they do, and more. Make it available for free and, voila!-an all-inclusive Web service, cooked to order.

In an attempt to win over the multi-tasking masses, two new services are doing exactly that. Windows Live (which is still in Beta) and Google Desktop 4 offer many of the same features, but each has a unique look and different packaging.

Google Desktop, for example, runs locally on your desktop; always connected via your broadband pipe, the portal keeps your news and other dynamic content fresh around the clock. I’ve recommended Google Desktop 3, but version 4 has added features.

Meanwhile, Live.com is more of a classic Web site, though you can customize it to your heart’s content.

Windows Live lets you personalize your home page simply by checking which items you’d like to appear there. Intended-according to Microsoft’s press release-"to bring together in one place all the relationships, information, and interests people care about most…across their PC, devices and the Web," the service makes it easy to select broad categories like "The Basics" and "News and Info," then drag and drop specific components within them until you’ve got a page that suits your liking.

Similarly, Google Desktop 4 gives you 60 (and counting) live "panels" that you can resize and move around your desktop at will. Want to keep an eye on your stocks? Put a ticker where you can see it-even set it to remain on top of other windows-so you’ll know when to buy or sell.

Trying to stay up to date on current events? Select an appropriate RSS-feed and you won’t miss a story.

Both services are free, and each requires you to sign in to access certain features. Still in Beta, Windows Live is, not surprisingly, a little rougher around the edges than Google Desktop, but the latter isn’t completely free of quirks.

Windows Live Beta

Static Web portals are dead. Long live their descendants: "personal Internet services and software." The phrase (from a Microsoft press release) doesn’t make for the most attractive acronym, but seems to represent the new trend in search services.

If you’re confused about the difference between the MSN portal’s My MSN page and Windows Live, you’re not alone. Live has a cleaner, more modern look and feel, but as far as I can tell right now, the two are different stabs at a personal portal, and Microsoft is hoping you’ll use one.

I found a lot of similarities between Live.com and Google Desktop and mostly the same features, though each has a unique look and different packaging.

To make full use of the Microsoft service, you have to log in using your Microsoft Passport Network credentials or after signing up for Live.com separately. I accessed the portal using my hotmail account and password.

Starting with search

At the heart of Live (actually you’ll find it top-center) is a wide-open search bar, the edges tinged in a warm radioactive green that’s surprisingly inviting. Put in a search and hit enter, and a window of results appears below.

A menu bar that opens immediately above your results shows all the different types of search available: Web, News, Images (an entirely new feature), and Local. I think the idea here is to provide you with choices for refining your search if you get too many results.

Having the choice before you search is more useful, I find, but that would clutter the otherwise clean original search bar.

The Google equivalent of Live, Google IG, is more cluttered but does manage to keep the various search-type buttons exposed.

Also, Windows Live has no advanced search (or hides it well). The site appears to support advanced syntax, but there’s no help that I could find.

The MSN portal’s search, on the other hand, has a very nice Search Builder that helps teach the syntax. (You get to it from the Search Results page.).

Searches completely take over your Live page, which I don’t like-all your other choices and info disappear. To get them back you must either hit the "x" in the upper right corner-completely obliterating your search results page-or hit the back button and wait for the page to refresh.

(You do have the option, though, of adding the results to your Live page, which closes the search page.)

I’m also not thrilled that clicking on a result takes you away from the Live page unless you remember to right-click and select open a new window.

Once I’d spent some time logged in to Live.com and made some customizations, I looked at it as a base of operations-a jumping-off point, not a place I expected to completely leave.

I’d prefer having search open its own window, leaving the rest of my page intact.

MSN Live assumes all subsequent searches are the same type as the one you just did-another annoying trait.

For instance, search on Ford-you’ll get Web results. Now click on Images, then go back to the Live home page and search on Chevy.

Instead of getting Chevy Web results, you get image results. In rare instances, this may be a good way of doing things, but in general I think most people want Web searches unless they say otherwise.

Microsoft also has taken a very unusual approach to displaying search results. Everything appears on a scrollable page. This may seem like a good idea at first, but it limits your ability to do deep searching. Try going to result 10,000.

An entirely new feature, Image search, really impressed me, though, at least in terms of its look and feel. A successful image search brings back a page containing thumbnails, and hovering over one immediately pulls forward a larger thumbnail with hotlinks to the result or for providing feedback on the type of result, as well as notes on the main image’s dimensions, size, and URL. Clicking on the link itself will open a frame with the image’s home page.

At the top of the frame, you’ll find other choices, such as "show image," which then highlights the image you originally selected, undocks it from the page, and turns the rest of the page opaque.

You can continue to scroll through the opaque page, leaving your image front and center. Just in case you didn’t actually find what you thought, you can click on thumbnails of your remaining search results that run along the left side of the screen.

In general, my test searches produced the results I’d expect.

Local search takes you directly to Microsoft’s Live Local page.

Your page is what you make of it

If search is most important mission of Live.com, customizing and personalizing the page and making it your own is second. In fact, just below the search bar a big blue banner announces this in so many words.

Occupying the far right side of this banner are three choices that are checked by default; they include "The Basics," "Windows Live Services," and "News and Info."

All the subsequent information filling various menu bars and menu dropdown boxes falls into one of these categories. You can uncheck whatever you don’t want, though. As you do, the affected information below the bar disappears, leaving you a very sparse screen with mainly the search bar to keep you company.

If you leave everything checked you’ll eventually have a rectangular window pre-populated with eight (currently) subcategories of services including E! Online, FoxSports Top Headlines, Gadget Gallery, MSNBC News, Mail, Safety Center, and Windows Live Gallery.

Pausing your cursor over any of these choices will bring up an "x" at the end that allows you to delete what you don’t want. Clicking on one of them results in the window expanding below with details about that category, including more information and links, as well as an "add to my page" link at the right end of a blue divider bar.

This is one of the main ways you can customize the site. Once you’ve added a category or categories, a more permanent looking window gets added to your page. You can then grab a sub-window by its blue header bar and drag it to change the window order or even create a second column on the page by dragging and dropping. (Competing sites offer similar capabilities.)

You’ll see "smart scroll" controls, a new feature, again and again. These give a new method of maneuvering through and hiding or expanding content. They work great when using a mouse, but I found them a bit tricky to use with my laptop pointing stick or touchpad.

There are a few different types-some appear only when you hover your cursor over the far right side of a horizontal list where there are further choices (such as in the Windows and Gadget galleries). The others are more vertically oriented and a bit less intuitive. For instance, one type allows you to use a slider to set how many text lines display for each of search result on a page.

Toolbar & other features

At 10.1 MB the app is neither terribly small nor overly large. It does contain lots of interesting and useful components by default. The thing I most looked forward to having at my fingertips was the toolset for clipping Web pages and content acquired from Onfolio.

Unfortunately, although I followed the install wizard’s instructions, I was never able to get Onfolio to install. Other features on the Toolbar did work (such as the Favorites feature).

Shortcomings

Some things remain quirky or don’t really work well yet. For example, I added E! Online as a category to my page, which resulted in "Oops, we seem to be having a problem with this feed. Please try again later."

The same message appeared when I tried to add a couple of RSS feeds to the Live.com page as well, though the feeds eventually appeared on the page a few minutes later. I also stumped the site by attempting to add Jerusalem to the weather gadget-it told me in red that it was searching. And searching. And searching.

The Live beta runs very well in IE6 and IE7 beta, but is not yet optimized for the beta builds of the forthcoming Windows Vista operating system.

I brought up the site on a machine running build 5308 of the new OS and found that the page became immediately unstable, with the various frames flashing as if they were being repeatedly refreshed.

I noted in a cursory glance, though, that the service/application seemed to run well on Firefox version 1.5. You can keep an eye out for future beta Live updates and new services by visiting the Live Ideas page.

So what do I think overall? Is it my new home for search? My new favorite Web portal replacement? Is it revolutionary? No to all. It does represent a more updated look and feel in terms of Microsoft online content and is worth a look.

Looks like I don’t have space for Google Desktop.  I’ll review it another time.

Dennis Turner